SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — A U.S. government report showed that weekly crude inventories climbed to their highest level on record, pulling oil futures down by the close to their lowest settlement in more than two weeks.

Tensions between Russia and the West over Ukraine continued to feed worries about oil supplies from Russia, analysts said, limiting price losses for oil, however.

Crude oil for June delivery
US:CLM4
fell 31 cents, or 0.3%, to settle at $101.44 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. That was the lowest settlement since April 7, based on the most-active contracts. Oil futures were trading at $101.90 shortly before the supply report and prices managed to trade briefly above $102 after it.

Brent crude
UK:LCOM4
the European benchmark, saw its June contract close at $109.11 a gallon, down 16 cents, or 0.2%, on the ICE Futures exchange.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration said crude stockpiles rose 3.5 million barrels for the week ended April 18. Analysts polled by Platts were looking for a climb of 3.1 million barrels.

Supplies for the week totaled 397.7 million barrels, the largest weekly total for commercial crude inventories since at least late August of 1982, based on EIA records going back as far as that date. Some analysts and news reports said the stockpile level was at an all-time high. The previous high of nearly 397.6 million barrels was reached in late May of last year.

“Although the market may think U.S. commercial crude is bursting at the seams, it is not — and at 397.7 million barrels, we are only 2.3% higher than one year ago,” said Richard Hastings, macro strategist at Global Hunter Securities. “The problem is on the demand side, which is quite weak.”

EIA data show that total petroleum products supplied over the last four-week period averaged over 18.2 million barrels per day. That’s down 1.6% from the same time a year ago.

Rising refinery capacity utilization also helped ease any concerns over petroleum product supplies as refineries ramp up from the usual Spring maintenance shutdowns. Utilization was at 91% for the latest week, up from, 88.8% a week earlier and up from 83.5% the same time a year ago, EIA data showed.

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